13 · ConformanceEN

Normative source: capability-language-core-v1.md §12 (12.1 Language Revision), Appendix B This page is a readable guide. In case of conflict, the normative specification wins. Status: Preview — not for production use.

TL;DR

CLC-v1 defines three conformance classes. CLC-A (authorization side) is the baseline; CLC-D (delegation containment) is optional, stacked on CLC-A; CLC-E (evidence side) is implemented and pinned by a corpus but NOT claimed. The honesty rule: agreement between implementations that share an author is a regression test, not independent validation.

1. The three classes (§12)

Class	What it includes	Status
CLC-A	§3 grammar, §6.1 entailment, §7 intersection, §9 decision, unknown_constraint/invalid_constraint, the allow_unresolved + additive unresolved channel (§8.4), multi-grant aggregation (§9.1), stable reason codes (§9.2); MUST pass vectors.json (154) and property-cases.json (1184)	claimed — the v1 baseline
CLC-D	Contains(parent, child) with its ordered layers, two stable relation codes (child_exceeds_parent, params_not_narrower), the profile contract (§13.8.1 — since rev CLC-1.18 including obligations 6–7: declare the transitivity basis before claiming a chain check, never report a union axis as a containment result), AuthorizeWithChain (rev CLC-1.13); MUST pass containment-vectors.json (64) + authorize-chain-vectors.json (15). The third code delegation_mode_not_narrower belongs to the binding-profile pre-check, never Contains; it has a profile-owned corpus (profile-owned/aic-jwt-da-mode-lattice-vectors.json, 5), and the obligations 6–7 are pinned by profile-declarations.json (11)	claimed
CLC-E	§6.4 match, §10 satisfaction, the evidence-side constraint grammar, evidence-vectors.json (32)	implemented, NOT claimed

Why CLC-E is withheld (§12): not for lack of material, but on principle — agreement is the bar, and the bar is two independent implementations (P12). Same-author parity does not meet it; and the evidence-side semantics are under joint review with EMILIA, so no claim is made ahead of that review. The obligations a future claim would carry are enumerated in §12 (verbatim there): three-valued evaluation where unknown is never read as satisfied; eligibility from integrity-protected native results only; ActionId as the digest of the declared material projection; a closed CLC-REQUIREMENT-v1; requirement from relying-party configuration; passing evidence-vectors.json.

An implementation that implements only CLC-A MUST NOT claim CLC-E.

2. Conformance corpora (§12, Appendix B)

CLC-A conformance is exercised by two machine-readable suites in capability/data/_vectors/clc-v1/:

• vectors.json — 154 vectors mapped to Appendix B (the machine-readable kind grouping differs from the appendix's semantic B.1–B.6 grouping; both counts are reproducible from the corpus): kind=entail (65), kind=decide (63), kind=intersect (17), kind=syntax (9). The CLC-1.15 cross-type audit vectors (intersect-011/-012/-013) extend the intersect group beyond the B.4 table; the CLC-1.16 input-boundary pins (params-053–params-062) and the CLC-1.17 numeric-corner pins (params-063–params-070), all kind=entail, pin the §6.2 number identity and I-JSON integer-bound rules — in CLC-1.17 B.3 is extended to cover them (P53–P70), so they no longer sit outside B.1–B.6.
• property-cases.json — 1184 cases pinning the §7 meet-law, identifier narrowing, and source-order independence.

CLC-D adds capability/data/_vectors/clc-d/containment-vectors.json (64), containment-property-cases.json (784 cases × 39 shared operations, forward-closure: Contains(P,C) ∧ Entails(C,o) ⟹ Entails(P,o), plus the §13.3 antisymmetry assertion), containment-crosswalk-vectors.json (44, with §13.8.1 obligation-3 out_of_scope declarations), authorize-chain-vectors.json (15), reason-collapse-vectors.json (3, the §13.5 collapse policy), and the profile-owned profile-owned/aic-jwt-da-mode-lattice-vectors.json (5, the §13.4.5 mode pre-check). The evidence side ships evidence-vectors.json (32).

Additional generated/pinned corpora: param-bounds-vectors.json (49), param-bounds-meet-vectors.json, constraint-union-vectors.json (12), constraint-union-collation-vectors.json (2), resolve-vectors.json (26), crosswalk-vectors.json (13, both directions: AEB crossing members + five foreign representations incl. OAuth RAR, AIC-JWT DA, AEG, UCAN, delegation chain → CLC grants). Revisions CLC-1.18/1.19 add, alongside vectors.json (still 154): symmetry-vectors.json (50 symmetry vectors — both sides of one action: authorization ⇄ evidence pairs, chain/multi-grant unions, the §11 relation boundary), profile-declarations.json (11 profile declarations pinning §13.8.1 obligations 6–7), scheme-declaration-vectors.json (9 declaration-validation vectors for the §6.7 CLC-SCHEME-v1 input), quantity-vectors.json (8, the quantity declared domain, evaluated through the *WithDomains entry points) and string-domain-vectors.json (24, decimal-string / subdomain / path-prefix, including the lexical refusals).

Genericity is exercised, not asserted (§12): a profile is a few lines of mapping written by the foreign-format owner; the core is not modified for any of them. Implementations MUST NOT redefine semantics, accept v1-forbidden wildcards, or broaden bounds during canonicalization.

3. Independence of implementations (honest scope, §12/§13.7)

The three implementations named in the repository README (Go, Python, TypeScript) are not independent evidence: they share an author, and their agreement is a regression test for the specification, not third-party validation. Until an independent implementation exists, the parity claim is scoped to "same-author, three languages, one corpus". Reviewers SHOULD treat a single-author parity claim as evidence the text is implementable, not independently interpreted.

Experimental neighbours are not CLC (§12): the WIT/WPT interop study (varwof/aic-jwt) implements a wider wildcard surface (**, {a,b}, [a-z]) that this revision rejects as unsupported_wildcard; it is not CLC-A and MUST NOT be cited as one.

4. Language Revision (§12.1)

Every implementation declares a language revision CLC-<major>.<minor>; this document declares CLC-1.19. An input (grant, operation, OCM) SHOULD carry the revision it was authored against; an input without one is treated as CLC-1.0.

• Compatible reading: an implementation MAY evaluate an input whose declared major equals its own AND whose declared minor is ≤ its own (a CLC-1.3 implementation reads 1.0–1.3, not 1.4 or 2.0).
• Incompatible reading MUST fail closed → deny("unsupported_language_revision"), resolved before any §9.1 layer; no downgrade, no warning-then-allow (revision-002; the positive side is revision-001).
• CLC-A conformance and the minor gate are two sides of one rule (§12.1): claiming CLC-A means implementing the semantics of the revision claimed — advertising CLC-1.19 MUST implement param_bounds (grammar + §6.6 meet), Resolve, ConstraintUnion, and §6.2 canonicalization, not merely tolerate their inputs. An implementation that lags declares an older revision and refuses newer inputs through the gate; it MUST NOT claim a revision higher than it implements, nor claim CLC-A while refusing a well-formed input of its own declared revision.

Revision-by-revision summary (full texts in §12.1; each entry's verdict impact is stated there):

Rev	Nature	Key addition / change
1.2	additive	decision unresolved field + invalid_constraint
1.3	additive, one re-scope	allow_unresolved verdict value; allow = "fully enforced"
1.9	additive	containment + CLC-D (§13)
1.10	additive, minor gate	param_bounds + four reason codes
1.11	additive	Resolve (§8.5) + invalid_resolution/invalid_timestamp
1.12	additive	ConstraintUnion (§7.1)
1.13	additive, CLC-D-scoped	AuthorizeWithChain (§13.11)
1.14	additive	BoundMeet §6.6 (param_bounds intersection)
1.15	corrective	cross-family meet refuses invalid_params_binding (allow→deny on that sub-set); JSON type-sensitive enum equal; UTF-8 byte-order collations; delegation_mode_not_narrower re-attributed to the profile pre-check
1.16	corrective	cross-port cross-check: I-JSON integer bound (>2^53−1 → invalid_params_number), leading-UTF-8-BOM refusal, host numeric-carrier normalization, raw text as the sole conformance entry; §8.1 max_rows × key-closure reconciliation; §13.4.2 :-segments are not a hierarchy; §13.4.3 five-row narrowing decision table (corpus 123 → 146)
1.17	corrective	numeric-corner closeout: the I-JSON bound is judged on the received token's mathematical value; number identity is the JSON number, not its spelling (-0 ≡ 0, 1e3 ≡ 1000); non-integer ≤17 significant digits carried as binary64 (round-to-nearest, ties to even). No verdict change (corpus 146 → 154)
1.18	additive	binding-profile contract completed: §13.8.1 obligations 6 (declare the transitivity basis before claiming a chain check) and 7 (never report a union axis as a containment result); new informative §13.9.7 carrier decision states; §11 states a relation between two artifacts is not expressible. No CLC-A verdict, reason code or vector changes
1.19	additive, minor gate	§6.7 scheme declaration (CLC-SCHEME-v1) with four declared domains (quantity, decimal-string, subdomain, path-prefix); reason codes unit_mismatch (layer 9) and unsupported_domain (declaration validation, before layer 1); Contains compares under the parent's declared domain (params_not_narrower on a mismatch), BoundMeet refuses cross-domain pairs (invalid_params_binding). Inputs without a declaration are unchanged

Verdict-stability honesty (§12.1): compatible reading governs readability, not verdict stability. On the §6.6 meet subset, CLC-1.10→1.14 moved invalid_params_binding → correct meet (deny→allow) and 1.15 moved the cross-family sub-case back to invalid_params_binding (allow→deny). Every input without param_bounds is verdict-stable across the 1.x range; a consumer MUST NOT assume stability on the param_bounds-meet subset.

Summary: what a conformance review checks

• [ ] CLC-A: vectors.json (154) + property-cases.json (1184) pass; §8.4 allow_unresolved/unresolved not dropped.
• [ ] CLC-D: containment-vectors.json (64) + authorize-chain-vectors.json (15) pass; Contains stays declared-set-only.
• [ ] CLC-E: NOT claimed (independence bar unmet, EMILIA review pending).
• [ ] Minor gate: no silent downgrade; unsupported_language_revision before any layer on incompatible input.
• [ ] §6.7 declaration gate: a malformed/mismatched/unsupported declaration is unsupported_domain before layer 1; a declared-domain key sits in params, never param_bounds.
• [ ] Honest scope: same-author parity is a regression test, not independent validation.

Common pitfalls

• Trusting pre-1.15 printed counts — text predating the CLC-1.15 cross-type audit says 120 vectors / kind=intersect (14); the audit added intersect-011/-012/-013, making 123 / (17) — the CLC-1.16 closeout added params-053–params-062 (kind=entail), and the CLC-1.17 numeric-corner closeout added params-063–params-070 (kind=entail) and pb-044–pb-049, so the current counts are 154 / entail (65), decide (63), intersect (17), syntax (9), with param-bounds-vectors.json at 49. The CLC-1.8 history row's "114 to 120" is correct for its time and stays.
• Quoting CLC-1.15 as the declared revision — the document has declared CLC-1.19 since 2026-10-17; the 1.15 entry was the current claim until 2026-09-25. The vectors.json corpus count (154) is unchanged by CLC-1.18/1.19 — their corpora ship in separate files (symmetry-vectors.json, scheme-declaration-vectors.json, quantity-vectors.json, string-domain-vectors.json, profile-declarations.json).
• Claiming CLC-E — the corpus exists, but the class is withheld on principle (§12, P12).
• Assuming verdict stability on param_bounds-meet inputs across minors — explicitly not guaranteed (§12.1).

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← 12-containment.md · → 14-cookbook.md · related: 02-overview.md, 11-reason-codes.md